Das feiras de ciências à iniciação científica no ensino médio profissionalizante : história da Fundação Escola Técnica Liberato Salzano Vieira da Cunha (1974-2009)

Abstract

This research studied how school culture, concerning undergraduate research, was constituted in Liberato Salzano Vieira da Cunha Technical High School, located in Novo Hamburgo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The school was designed by means of an agreement among three government levels - Federal, State and Municipal Government - in 1957. It took 10 years to build the school, and its activities started with the Chemistry Technical Course, in April 12, 1967. This investigation was conducted under the Cultural History perspective, and aims at understanding the constitution of a school culture influenced by a set of practices established due to the organization of science fairs in this school. The study sought to know the origin of research practices associated to the institution's daily routine. Therefore, it analyzes how school culture concerning undergraduate research was constituted in this technical high school context, which was intertwined to the organization of Brazilian Sciences and Technology Exhibition/International Sciences and Technology Exhibition. The first version of this fair was the Fundação Liberato internal fair, in the 1970s. In the following decade, it became MOSTRATEC state fair, and was transformed into a national fair; finally, in the 1990s, it came to an international level. Using Oral History as methodology, discourses and contents concerning memory acts were analyzed, as well as recollections, forgotten pieces of a past, and the possibility of construction of this undergraduate research culture in technical high school. The analyses demonstrate that the institution was founded in the community with the legacy of an excellency school founding myth, even before its facilities were built, which established, then, constant practices that reinforce this representation. One of these practices was the organization science fairs, which provided the inclusion, in the school's daily routine, of practices and strategies that stimulate the involvement and the construction of scientific knowledge by students from the many courses offered by Fundação Liberato.